Below are a few ideas for possible work that could be the focus for the proposed new eGov Member Section. These reflect several trains of thought based upon my own previous involvement in the eGov TC (including most recently the informal meeting held in San Diego at the OASIS AGM); on my work as Chairman of the “eGovernment Focus Group” of the European Standards Agency, CEN/ISSS; on work done by and in my own company, Pensive. As you will probably know also, I have recently been elected to the OASIS Board and would want to follow the work of this Member Section as part of my Board responsibilities.
1. “eGovernment Upper Ontology” or “Reference Model” and eGov artefact identifiers
Several agencies have referred to the need for and have built models and ontologies for eGovernment. the question in San Diego was whether there was a role for OASIS in leveraging this work. A combination of the work of Dublin Core, high-level reference models and ontologies could provide a common method for identifying, “labelling” and describing eGovernment data, services and service components. Unique identity for such eGovernment artefacts is also growing in importance: think of it as the “EAN/UPC numbering system for eGovernment”.
>>How about starting by reviewing the MIREG standard we developed for the EU? Probably needs more work but it has the basics from which to start.
Also Maewyn and I struggled with this for years in the OeE and it ground to a halt. I think she produced a final report on the issues but it might be worth a catch up with her?
PFB> Yes, MIReG is a start, particularly as it developed the world’s first ever ebXMLrr prototype – and then disappeared: I have all the original project files, as they seemed to vanish from the European Commission’s records ;-)
2. Personal identification and data management
Several TCs, as well as groups in other Consortia (such as W3C and elsewhere) have struggled with the multiplicity of XML schema elements and other data constructs used to represent natural and legal persons and the consequent problems of interoperability between then. A recent call to find an interchange format based on vCard is an excellent example: whatever the context specific needs and representations, it is clear that public sector agencies play a central role in issuing and managing personal identifiers and could thus play an important role in developing some form of interchange protocols. A commonly agreed ebXML Core Component for personal (and organisation/company)identifier, for example?
>> I think this would need a significant input from government business managers as idenitfiers vary significantly even across government. Trying to standardise these and getting a new protocol adopted would be a huge challenge. Perhaps the starting point should be getting a business case for adoption agreed before getting too deep into the protocol itself.
PFB> To be clear, the objective is not to create new identifiers (goodness knows how difficult that has been) but rather to try to agree to common mapping mechanisms across some common data elements, hence the reference to an ebXML CC. There is immense business value in trying to do this, as Microsoft are seeing with their CardSpace initiative.
3. Document interoperability and long-term archiving
The recent Call for proposals from the European Commission points to a clear need here [1]: this could even be an opportunity for the member Section as an entity to be involved in a serious large-scale pilot project. I don’t believe the proposed TC on doc standards interoperability can, or is scoped, to cover the wider issues of legal validity, long-term persistence, and public sector “imprimatur” on official documents (such as role of publicly issued DigSigs for document signing)
>> I would refer everybody to the work being done by our National Archives on this issue. Certainly not a topic to try and re-invent wheels.
PFB> Agreed, it’s an excellent start: PDF/A, OOXML/XPS and ODF are all concerned with this and it would be important to ensure that the respective key industry players are involved.
4. eGovernment resources Sharing
This has been a focus of my work in the CEN/ISSS eGov Focus Group and can be summed up as: if you want to develop a greater commitment to collaboration and willingness to share eGovernment resources between public administrations, you need to make it easier for public officials and project managers to find and share their stuff. We have worked on ideas and recommended standards for doing this, and want very much to build momentum across different agencies and consortia in developing a common standards-based model for resources sharing.
>>Is this is not an extension of 1. above? In which case MIREG is relevant.
PFB> Not really an extension, more a leverage point: the point is to provide common access, discovery and sharing mechanisms, not just common identification for eGov resources: this is covered a little in our discussion paper available at http://www.pensive.eu/uid/0079